


The L Word

by Daisiestdaisy (Doyle)



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: M/M, post-s2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 09:03:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4619508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/pseuds/Daisiestdaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After he's fired, there's no reason Gavin would stick around to give business advice to the traitor who replaced him. Except Hooli is Gavin's life, and he cares about the legacy he's leaving behind.</p><p>Big Head's mostly in this for the company and the free food.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The L Word

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Legs (InsanityRule)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsanityRule/gifts).



> Belated birthday fic for insanityrule, my enabler in all things NelsonBelson.
> 
> There's an awesome illustration for this, drawn by Ursais and commissioned by LiesD: http://daisiestdaisy.tumblr.com/post/134319574985/ten-bobcats-jareddunn-the-universe-has-a

 

The board hadn’t sent in Security. Yet. Gavin knew that was the next step, if he didn’t go quietly. But as a gesture of goodwill, they said, they’d given him an hour to take any small, personal items from his office.

He’d hoped Denpok would be there. If ever he needed wise counsel, it was now. Even his VPs, who he usually regarded as a trio of semi-sentient chattering furniture, would have been something. Instead, there was only some non-descript human resources middle manager, hovering by his desk – and Bighetti, sipping a soda on one of his couches, watching him take his framed magazine covers off the walls, and no doubt already mentally redecorating the place.

Gavin dropped a copy of _Forbes_ into the box they’d deigned to give him, not caring that the glass cracked. “That one’s from ’98,” he said. “We opened the Campus that year. Just this main building. Peter wanted to call it Hooli One. I insisted on Hopper, for Grace.”

“Huh,” Bighetti said. “I don’t know who that is. Okay.”

“Where were you, I wonder?”

“Uh, 98? Third grade, so – Mr O’Brien’s class in Tulsa, I guess. Fractions.”

HR guy looked ready to jump out of his skin. At least somebody was still afraid of him. And if Bighetti was fucking with him, now, when he was being ousted from his own company... fuck, some part of him would honestly admire that. While the rest of him devoted the rest of his life to destroying him, obviously.

“Did you plan all of this?” he wondered aloud, turning to look at him. No reason why they couldn’t be honest with each other, at least.

Bighetti blinked up at him with those huge, dark, infuriating eyes. “Did I plan...?”

Gavin gestured furiously at the magazines, the box, the office, the entire campus outside – at the last twenty years of his life, currently dwindling to nothing.

“Yeahhh,” Bighetti said, stretching the syllable like taffy, “gonna level with you; I’m not a hundred percent sure what’s going on right now?”

HR said, wearily, “I can run through it all one more time, sir.”

“Like that.” Bighetti jerked his thumb at the guy. “Gary keeps calling me sir. That's weird, right?”

Gavin stared at HR, the name sparking something. It had been a Gary in Human Resources, he remembered, who’d altered Bighetti’s rating in his performance file before the XYZ launch, massaging the figures to bring them more in line with what might be expected from the wunderkind they'd wanted him to look like. Maybe _he_ was the architect of all this. Smart, how at the time he'd protested and pretended to think it was “unethical” and “against the law”.

“I’ve explained to Nelson that you’ve reached a mutual decision with the Hooli board to step down as CIO.” The official line sounded stilted. Gary was either a bad liar or horribly afraid. Gavin hoped it was the latter. “And that, as his protégé, the board recognized him as the natural choice to take your place.”

Oh, they thought so, did they.

Nelson said, “So do I get a vote on that, or...”

See what a fucking good choice they thought he was when Gavin told them everything. If he was going out he’d take everybody with him and raze the fucking place to the ground and scorch the earth and...

“And I’m sure you agree, Gavin.” Gary had dredged up some courage from somewhere, was looking him square in the face now. “If you have to go, isn’t it better to leave behind a legacy? So you’ll be remembered as a great leader? Someone who saw Nelson’s incredible potential and nurtured it so brilliantly that within six months of joining us he was leading what’s seen as one of the greatest tech companies in the world? Isn’t that more important to you than anything?”

If he’d gotten married, if he’d given in back in college and at least tried to make it work with one of the girls his parents kept nudging in his direction, he’d probably have children today. He might have a son Bighetti’s age, even. Someone to carry on his work. As it was, he’d chosen Palo Alto and Hooli and Peter. But that only meant his name, his legacy, was even more important.

He finished packing the box in silence, seething, Bighetti’s placidly puzzled eyes burning a hole in his back. He was out of his office – former office – with thirty-eight minutes of his allotted hour to spare.

**

He could only assume this was Gary’s twisted revenge. Half a dozen people in the world knew his personal phone number, and none of them would have given it to Nelson Bighetti. He must have unearthed it from Gavin’s personnel file.

Maybe the kid had some shred of initiative after all.

“Why,” Gavin said, “the ever-loving _fuck_ would I help you?”

“Just figured it was worth a shot. If you don’t want to or you’re too busy or whatever, that’s cool, I get it,” Bighetti said. Not sycophantic, not afraid of him, just asking for help.

What the fuck was he supposed to do with that?

Gavin dropped back against a pile of pillows and scowled up at his meditation room’s ceiling. The exact shade of blue, a paint-job that had cost more than what he’d been told was the average price of a home, was meant to evoke a soothing open sky. It didn’t. “Help with what?”

**

A lot, as it turned out. Starting from the moment he walked into the bar.

“So, funny story, I’ve never been here before and I don’t drive and I tried showing them my picture on the cover of Wired but turns out that’s ‘not a legally valid form of ID’...”

Gavin grudgingly bought him a beer and let him ask his questions.

“You’re the Chief Innovation Officer. You innovate. You lead. You set a direction for the company. You can’t fucking drive?”

“Yeah, that was a whole thing. So is the CIOing like nine-to-five, or can I set my own hours?”

The second time, Bighetti got carded again, and Gavin suffered the indignity of ordering a vodka and Red Bull.

“Be respectful with the board. Don’t just say ‘gentlemen’. Make sure Rachel feels included. And try to stand whenever you can. You want people to physically look up at you as much as possible. It creates a subconscious deference in their minds.”

“Easier for you than me,” Bighetti mumbled, and Gavin smiled despite himself.

At some point they started meeting at restaurants instead of bars.

“The two guys and the red-headed lady who’re always in my office and telling me to sign stuff – what do they do? And what are their names? I’d ask, but it’s been weeks.”

“That’s the right move. Never admit you’ve forgotten anyone’s name. It makes you look thoughtless and puts them in a position of power over you.” What _were_ those three called? He speared a piece of mangosteen from the container he’d brought from home. “The woman’s Patricia,” he said, pleased with himself for remembering.

“Cool, okay, that’s one.” Nelson, almost done with a platter the menu had claimed was for three people, said, “Seriously, I feel bad, next time let’s go somewhere they’ll do your weirdo fruitarian stuff.”

That was a hell of an assumption, that there’d be a “next time”, that just because he’d reluctantly agreed to these seven or eight informal briefings this was some kind of ongoing arrangement. He was ready with a scathing tirade on these lines, and then Nelson darted his fork across the table and stole a piece of his fruit salad, and he was so surprised he wound up agreeing to meeting number eight or nine, Friday, six o’clock.

One restaurant in Mountain View did provide a fruitarian menu for him and a supersized-and-very-much-not-fruitarian option for his dinner companion. At least, they did when one of his household staff called and told them how much he’d pay for the meal. He got to make Nelson wear a jacket and tie. Two months of enforced retirement had warped his idea of a fun time.

That had to be the case, because not long after that he invited Nelson into his home.

“I noticed you were playing Galaga when I got to the bar a couple of weeks back,” he said, hitting the games room lights. “I thought you’d like to see my collection.”

“ _Whoa_.”

The fact that he’d made his first billion by 28, or that he’d been Time’s Person of the Year twice – both dropped into bar/dinner conversations – hadn’t inspired anything approaching the awe or the look of respect from Nelson that his roomful of original arcade machines did.

“Do they work?”

“Of course they fucking _work_.”

This room was normally off-limits to visitors, but he was in a good mood, and he hadn’t had anyone over in a while, and he couldn’t see the harm in one game.

“No, reload before this next corner, keep your arms locked, you’re aiming too low – _fuck_.” When they died yet again, Gavin dropped his own light gun into the slot at the front of the machine and dragged Nelson in front of him, chest flush against Nelson’s back, hands covering his over the plastic weapon.

At least he was small. Sure, anything below 5’10 was disastrous for a CEO, worse than (just to pull a random example from nowhere) being openly gay, but it made it easy to correct his form.

“Headshot. Headshot. Reload. See how we’re keeping our grip tight and high?”

Nelson must run hot; he could feel the warmth even through his own shirt and that button-down/sweater combo that seemed to be Nelson’s preferred interpretation of business casual. His neck was a little flushed too, now Gavin was looking for it.

“Nope. Don’t get it. At all. Show me again?”

Jesus, and this was supposed to be the video game generation. This could take a while, Gavin thought, and acting as an unofficial mentor must have made him more patient because he should have been annoyed by that, but he just shifted his stance so his arms were a little more securely around Nelson and got ready to go again.

***

“Do you need me to do anything?”

Gavin didn’t mind that Nelson wasn’t helping; the whole point of cooking himself, even though he had professional chefs on his full-time staff, was to show off how talented he was. And partly because Nelson had looked so pained at the thought of vegan Italian food that he’d had to try it. “You could stop eating ice-cream and sit on one of the chairs like a normal person,” he suggested.

Nelson stayed sitting on the marble counter and spooned another mountain of Cherry Garcia into his mouth. That must have been more of a rhetorical offer of help.

“So I had this idea at work,” Nelson said. This usually preceded something either maddening or entertaining. Occasionally both. From the hesitation in his tone, Nelson thought it was going to be the first one.

“Oh?”

“I was thinking, Nucleus is still shitty, but it’s probably better than anything else we’ve got, so if we could bring somebody in to de-shittify it, like a consultant who knows middle-out and isn’t super happy where he’s working right now...”

“You want to hire Richard.” Three months ago, Gavin’s first question would have been “have you lost your mind?” and his follow-up would have been “no, I’m seriously asking, have you lost your _fucking mind?_ ” But time brought perspective, as he thought Denpok had once told him, and Nucleus really was a shitty project, and in some ways Richard Hendricks back at Hooli was something he could count as a victory. A small one, and far too late, but a victory nonetheless. “It’s a good idea,” he said. “You should ask him.”

“Oh, I did. He said no. He, uh, used a lot more words than that but I didn’t write it down or anything.”

That was odd. He was an unofficial advisor, of course. Not a Hooli employee, not getting paid for this, and Nelson wasn’t obligated to run anything past him. He just always did. Business decisions. Takeout orders. Photos of funny dogs he’d seen in the street he wanted to check were “good enough for Instagram”.

“If you already asked him, what are we talking about?”

“It’s just...” Nelson kicked his heels against the kitchen island. “I checked out Richard’s personnel file before I talked to him. I figured I should find out if we’d need to interview him again. You know how everybody gets ranked on the aptitude test and the interview?”

“HR bullshit. I didn’t deal directly with hiring and f... well, sometimes firing.”

“So Richard’s not great at interviews, but he aced the technical exam, just blew them away, and that means the rating on his file was 1C. And I was kind of curious because I _suck_ at interviews like you wouldn’t believe and I’m a tenth as good a programmer as Richard on a good day, but...”

“But you looked at your file and you’re 1A-rated,” Gavin said. He made it fast, clinical: “I had HR fake it when I was setting up XYZ. I needed you to look like a genius.”

“Yeah, I guessed that part.” He stuck the spoon back in the ice cream carton and pushed it away. “Do you know what the original rating was?”

He shook his head. He’d known at one point, but the information hadn’t been important enough to remember. Nelson hadn’t mattered then. “We’re – Hooli is one of the most competitive firms in the world. You wouldn’t have been hired if you were ranked below a 2C.”

“Right, sure,” Nelson said. The smile was tight and insincere on his face. “I’d have to either be pretty good, or so bad I fell under this crazy lottery scheme you made HR try for two months where you hired a couple of random picks from the worst five percent.”

Shit. He remembered now. Not 1A, or 2C, or any other rank-grade combo; he’d been listed as L, for lottery hire. If he hadn’t been desperate he would’ve canned the XYZ plan there and then.

For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to regret not following that instinct.

“It’s not like I thought I got your job on merit,” Nelson said. “I’m not a complete idiot. Or I thought I wasn’t. This whole time I thought that at least that first part I did on my own.”

He had his head down, looking fascinated by his scuffed sneakers. Gavin turned down the heat and moved to stand in front of him. It was an odd angle, Nelson taller for once.

“The universe has a path for us, Nelson,” he said. “I know you don’t believe that, but I do. I honestly do. And this just confirms it.” He leaned in to make Nelson meet his eyes, hands either side of his knees on the counter. “You never would have worked at Hooli except for random chance, and you never would have been promoted except for my entirely justified feud with Richard, and now look at you. Who gives a fuck whether you got here by merit? What does that even mean? You have something far greater than that. You got here by destiny.”

Deep underneath all his noble thoughts about fate and luck and legacies, something whispered in him that he’d always had a thing for deep brown eyes, and that from this close Nelson really was... he might be offended by “pretty”, even if it fit. “Striking”, maybe.

He probably could have powered through and ignored that on its own, but then Nelson threw himself forward, and if the kiss was clumsy it was also sweet and cherry-flavored and full of the reckless confidence of a twenty-something kid who’d never been hurt.

Well, if this was where the universe was taking him, who the hell was he to argue?

***

(He took a picture at the breakfast table. Passed it off as if he was just testing the phone’s camera, because there was no reasonable explanation for why he wanted a photo of Nelson looking exactly as he looked every morning, half asleep over his cereal with his hair everywhere.

“One more time.”

Nelson made a face. He didn't do pop quizzes before eight a.m. “Ugh. People storing useless videos and image files. Using up all the storage space. Datageddon, which is such a stupid name. Need to bring you in to consult.”

“And you open with?”

“...gentlemen and lady.”

“Perfect.”

“Gavin, I’ve got this.”

“I know.” He dropped a kiss on the top of messy dark curls. “I know you do.”

Later, while Nelson was with the board, he looked through his camera roll and considered deleting some of the pictures. He’d taken a lot in the last six months – probably more than in the five years before that – and if Hooli was going to bring him on as a consultant he should do his part against the rising cool-named datageddon tide.

He backed them up to the cloud instead. They'd figure out something later. He had faith.)


End file.
